Winter TV preview: Shows to watch now
After a historically awful year, you can take it as either bewildering or reassuring that television steams ahead on a mostly steady course, providing familiar entertainment amid the vast disruptions of politics and the pandemic.
A listing of programs to look forward to in the first two months of 2021:
‘Call Me Kat’
Miranda Hart’s 2009 British comedy Miranda had an unmistakable influence on Fleabag.
Now it has inspired a straightforward American remake, with Mayim Bialik in Hart’s role as the awkward, talkative woman who has her own small business) and a mother who’s obsessed with her daughter’s lack of a boyfriend. (Fox, Sunday)
‘In the Long Run’
Idris Elba created this warmhearted series and stars in it as Walter, the father in an immigrant family in 1980s East London. (Starz, Sunday)
‘30 Coins’
In a provincial town in Spain, a cow gives birth to a human baby (“Nobody puts this on Instagram until we know what it’s all about,” the mayor announces) and then things start to get weird. (HBO, Monday)
‘Judi Dench’s Wild Borneo Adventure’
The newest streaming behemoth, Discovery+, debuts Monday with a library of more than 55,000 episodes of nonfiction TV as well as new nature series.
Particularly alluring, though, is this two-part documentary featuring the noted thespian and orangutan groupie Judi Dench, who is irresistible, whether describing her first sight of true jungle (“it is like flying over broccoli”). (Discovery+, Monday)
‘Spiral’
France’s gift to the police-procedural genre begins its eighth, and final, season. (MHz Choice, Tuesday)
‘Coyote’
This six-episode thriller starring Michael Chiklis as a recently retired border-patrol officer stands out among the old-school CBS crime dramas and Star Trek spinoffs that populate Viacom’s streaming service. (CBS All Access, Thursday)
‘Dickinson’
Dickinson, Alena Smith’s Transcendentalist teen comedy starring Hailee Steinfeld as the poet Emily Dickinson, begins its second season. (Apple TV+, Jan. 8)
‘Lupin’
The French series, set in Paris, was created by British screenwriter George Kay (Killing Eve). (Netflix, Jan. 8)
‘Pretend It’s a City’
Martin Scorsese, who already made a documentary (Public Speaking in 2010) celebrating the acerbic New York flâneur Fran Lebowitz, expands the concept into seven half-hour episodes of commentary — from both Lebowitz and Scorsese — about their beloved city and the many people who don’t deserve to live there. (Netflix, Jan. 8)
‘All Creatures Great and Small’
Tune in for bespoke nostalgia, Yorkshire vistas and arms inside cows, along with one of Diana Rigg’s last performances, as the owner of a pampered Pekingese. (PBS, Jan. 10)
‘Tiger’
This two-part, three-hour documentary about Tiger Woods will no doubt be compared to The Last Dance, the 10-episode opus about Michael Jordan that drew huge audiences for ESPN last year. Woods’ story is more tragic and more complicated. (HBO, Jan. 10)
‘Servant’
Lauren Ambrose returns as a type-A mom whose child is either an adorable living baby or a realistic baby-size doll — it has a habit of changing from scene to scene — in the second season of this mordantly funny horror series. (Apple TV+, Jan. 15)
‘WandaVision’
The premiere of this show featuring the covert superheroes Scarlet Witch and Vision marks an unofficial relaunch of the TV wing of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (Disney+, Jan. 15)